


Debt and Lies are Often Mixed Together (but This is Neither of Those)

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Reaction fic to 3.11, not as angsty as it could have been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 10:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9542690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: Cisco considers the reason he told HR he was offered Trial by Combat on his behalf, and the reason he actually did it.The first isn't really a lie, but it's not for some imagined owing either.genfic.





	

It’s not really a lie. Not that he never lies, like, duh, sure he does, because working with superheroes tends to mean a lot of miswording the truth and twisting statements and then there’s the flat out lying. But this isn’t a lie, not really. It’s the truth, just not entirely. Just not in the way he said it.

 _You’re not like the other Wellses,_ that part was the truth. It was the rest of it that just sounded like the kind of stuff HR would like, about owing debts and mentors, the kind of thing from cheap fantasy paperbacks, or best selling sci-fi romances. The kind of thing he wouldn’t question. But of course in a way it was true. He wouldn’t be here, in this time and place and with these powers and memories and losses without Wellsobard and Harry. He owes that, at least. There’s some kind of debt to the first Wells, who wasn’t Wells at all, for giving him the chance to be here. If not for that, he wouldn’t have his powers, for whatever good or evil they bring, for all the visions that have saved lives and the nightmares that remind him of too many deaths, including his own. He likes to think that debt cleared when Eobard killed him, or when Eobard died, nothing left to pay, but that line about a great destiny, an honorable destiny,  still digs in at the back of his brain like ivy holding tight against a wall. But this isn’t about him, not really, and it’s not about Harry, either.

It’s about HR and it’s about that true thing, Y _ou’re not like the other Wellses._

Eobard took Harrison’s body for his own, lied and manipulated and murdered for his own ends, and no matter how much he mentored or if he ever really cared that cannot change. When things came down to the final line, it was Eobard who decided bonds didn’t matter. He backed out first, and as much as his bringing Cisco to this place helped him, that wasn’t the point. Eobard used him, used his innovation, his mind, his creations.  He already took payment, and never intended to give anything for it, it was just side-effect, in a way.

Harry came and lied and manipulated and murdered for his own ends, hiding truths until too many people were dead, Harry used them all like chess pieces, and sure by the end maybe he cared. But maybe he didn’t. It was too hard to tell, really, and he put little effort into expressing. So maybe he helped Cisco hone his powers. Cisco couldn’t forget the hand hovering near his heart, the way Harry had used his trauma and his lab like his own personal toolkit.  So again, there’s the mixture of respect and dislike and confusion. The vibes got Jesse free. The vibes saved all their lives. That’s payment enough, isn’t it?

Because that’s another part of it. Like Barry, like Wally, like Martin Stein and Jax,  like the Real Jay Garrick with a dead-man’s face, he has these powers. Who trained him and who gave them to him doesn’t matter nearly so much as what he does with them. If he’s learned anything from binge watching Daredevil (aside from his complete and entire devoted gratitude for Caitlin Snow’s existence and willingness to constantly nurse them back to life) it’s exactly that. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. But those factors aren’t why he’s been stitching together a suit. And while there might be something left from the last few years lingering when he sees HR, the face of his mentor and murderer and nemesis, it’s mostly not.

That’s the heart of it. _You’re not like the other Wellses._

He doesn’t explain, _you never tried to kill me, or even pretended to._ He doesn’t stand there, awkward, pulling out the past that will only make HR feel guilty about things he can’t control, because why bother, there’s enough on everyone’s plate. _You never used us like tools the way the other two did. You bought Iris a turtle and remembered that detail from when you looked through the photo albums at christmas._ It doesn’t make sense in his own head, not quite, but something did, in that moment, when he interrupted Barry. Barry’s got enough to focus on right now, anyway, with Iris, and Savitar. He doesn’t say, _You don’t try to be our boss or in charge of us or better than us, not really._

He doesn’t explain, _You genuinely care. You, for whatever reason, want to be our friend. You’re not that great at it, but. You’re trying. And you don’t deserve to die because you wanted a place to belong. A place to matter._

He’d wanted the same once, and someone with this man’s face gave it to him, but Cisco likes to think that it’s Harrison that he owes. The man Tina’s told them about, who loved Science and cared about those who loved it. STAR Labs was that man’s before it was anyone’s. So it’s not really a lie in any case. Somehow, that makes him feel a little better. It’s somehow  an idea not fully formed, somehow too private and too uncertain to offer. So he says something that the writer in HR will appreciate, and leaves it at that.

He’s not going to die tomorrow. And if he is, well he’s three for three with dying and that not sticking, and that’s gotta count for something.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are love.


End file.
